The Internet is an exceedingly popular medium for data communication between computers. The Internet is a hierarchy of many computer networks, all of which are interconnected by various types of server computers. Some of the servers, interconnected through the Internet, also provide database housing or storage for a plurality of web pages. These web pages may be retrieved by users (also referred to as surfers) operating computers that are connected to the Internet and running browser applications. Exemplary browser applications, such as but not limited to, include: Openwave Systems Inc. or Opera Mobile Browser (a trademark of Opera Software ASA), Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile (a trademark of Microsoft), Firefox Web Browser, etc.
Many current web pages are defined by markup language (ML) files, such as but not limited to HTML, XML, WML, SGML, HDML etc. HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language, XML is an acronym for Extensible Markup Language and WML is an acronym for Wireless Markup Language. SGML is an acronym for Standardized General Markup Language. HDML is an acronym for Handheld Device Markup Language. It should be noted that the terms “HTML”, “XML”, “SGML”, “HDML” and “WML” may be used interchangeably herein. Henceforth, the description of different embodiments of the present invention may use the term ‘HTML’ as a representative term for any of the various forms of markup languages unless specifically limited to a particular markup language.
An ML file contains various commands, instructions, data, and references (links) that together define the overall appearance of a web page once it is fetched and rendered using a browser or other similar application. Common HTML files may comprise information that is relevant to the web page and that is needed for rendering the requested web page. Information such as but not limited to a style sheet, text, images, JavaScript, links to a style sheet, links to JavaScript, links to additional objects, links to other web pages, etc. A web page can be composed from a plurality of objects or segments of the web page that together comprises the web page.
Usually, an HTML file comprises links to the above-described objects rather than comprising the objects themselves. This technique is widely implemented, thus most HTML files can include basic text and links to style sheets, JavaScripts, images, and other objects and not the style sheet or the object itself, etc. Objects that are used by the browser itself are referred as browser's objects. The links to the browser's objects are fetched automatically by the browser during parsing of the page—these links are referred as browser's links. Links such as but not limited to links to JavaScript, to style sheets, and to images can be referred as browser's links. Other links can be displayed on the surfer's screen for the surfer to select. Those links are referred as surfer's links or user's links. Exemplary surfer's links can be a link to another web page.
While surfing the World Wide Web (WWW), a surfer (a user), utilizing a browser equipped device, may send an HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) request to a web server. In response, the web server may send an HTML file of the requested web page. HTML, ML file, HTTP and WWW are well known in the art and therefore they are not further described. A reader who wishes to learn more about them is invited to read in technical books.
Nowadays, millions of users surf the Internet. A growing number of surfers use a handheld device, a mobile device, which can wirelessly surf the Internet and retrieve web pages. Exemplary mobile device can be mobile phones (cellular phones, and smart phones—such as but not limited to the iPhone (a trademark of Apple computers Inc), and so on), PDA (Personal Digital Assistants), etc. In the disclosure, the above names may be used interchangeably and the term mobile device can be used as a representative term for the above group. Usually a mobile device has some limitation in comparison to a common computer (such as personal computer or a laptop). Exemplary limitation can be: a smaller screen, limited computing power, limited storage capabilities, inability to support JavaScript, limited keyboard capabilities, etc.
There are different types of device capabilities. There are devices that require content adaptation for surfing and there are devices that don't require content adaptation, for example. There are a myriad of combinations of device-browser. In addition there are different types of websites. An exemplary website can be a mobile aware website. An exemplary URL of a mobile aware website can be websites ending with “.mobi”, or a URL starting with WAP instead of starting with WWW. Other websites may not be aware to the capabilities of mobile devices.
There are cases in which a service provider, which can be located over an intermediate node between the surfers and the web servers, would like to add, on the fly (while rendering a webpage to a surfer), additional data to requested web pages. The additional added data can be a banner with a logo of the service provider, a link to other web pages, an advertisement, news, a surfer's bookmarks (the user's favorite websites), etc. Service providers may store the user's favorite web page, and may handle the user's bookmarks, for example. The banner can be placed as a header at the top of the rendered web page or as footer at the bottom of the rendered web page, for example. Such capabilities can be used for informing a user of the mobile device about locale or current events, or to get the surfer's bookmarks that are stored at a cellular operator's premises, for example. Therefore, adding data to a web page will increase the user's surfing experience.
However, due to the limitation of mobile devices, the huge number of different combinations of devices and browsers and the number of different web pages, it can be complicated to add the additional data to a web page while it is rendered to a surfer using a mobile device. An existing technique uses a common content adaptation server. A content adaptation server is a powerful and complicated machine and consequently an expensive one. The content adaptation server intercepts the data transportation between a plurality of mobile devices and a plurality of web servers, processes and modifies the received web page in order to adapt them to the combination of mobile device-browser, which is the destination of each of the web pages. Using a content adaptation server only for adding banners, footers or headers, to a web page is an expensive solution.
Therefore there is a need for a simple system that can add the additional data to a web page when rendering them to surfers that use the mobile device. Such a system can be installed at a service provider's premises, for example, in an intermediate node between the surfers and the web servers. A service provider can be a cellular operator, a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) operator, data network operator, an access network service provider, an Internet Service Provider (ISP), etc.